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I love it, will continue to use for as long as possible

I had this seat passed down to me by a friend along with the rest of the travel system it matches. We used it from when my daughter was around 6 weeks old as my friends daughter hadn't quite grown out of it when mine was born. How I wish we had been able to have this from birth! I can not understand why there are so many bad reviews on here about it. All our family loves it.

*How to use*It comes in 2 parts - the base and the main car seat. To fit it into the car you seperate the base and the main unit, strap the lap belt accross the base and place the car seat on top of the base until you hear a clunk. Compared to other car seats I have seen/used this is so easy to use. It makes minimal 'faffing' when putting the baby in and out the car, if she is asleep we can quitely unattach the car seat from the base and carry her inside. It can be taken off the base by pulling up a lever on the back, which you can do with one hand, and lifting the car seat up with the handle.

To fasten the baby in there are 2 shoulder strap which click in to another strap which comes up between the baby's legs. To loosen the straps you lift up a small metal clip located further below the crotch strap and tug on the shoulder straps.

*Good points*- Suitable from birth to 13kg. My baby is now 13months, so more of a toddler, but we still use this car seat for when she is going in other peoples cars as it is so easy to pop in and out. I would say she would last another month or two so we have got plenty of use in it.

- Following on from my last point... it has no wear or tear on it, despite being given it second hand and it having regular use for over a year with us. I will undoubtedly be using it for our next baby too.

- If you have the rest of the travel system (Ultima/MPX) it is handy to take the baby out of the car in the car seat and attach it straight on to the wheels. Saves waking the baby up to put her in a seperate pram or pushchair.

- The best point of all perhaps is how comfortable my baby seems to be in it. She has no trouble falling asleep in it, the straps don't dig in to her and the padding doesn't seem to annoy her at all.

I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend this to anyone with the rest of the travel system. Even though I have sold the rest of the pram/pushchair I will be keeping this to use for my next baby as I love it so much. The only bad point I can come up with is that on leather seats it can slide about a little. Not enough to cause me concern, but it is worth mentioning.

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Just dont buy it.

do not buy this car seat. no matter how pretty, comfortable and safe it looks as it is the complete opposite of all of these.the first time i used it was to bring my son home from hospital. he was sat vertically, and his head kept falling forward as he slept. i thought this was just due to inexperience but as weeks, months passed i was wrong. the car seat it too far forward when attached to the base in the car, and baby does not ''look right'' when sat in it, i refuse to go anywhere in the car with him in the back on his own as im terrified of what may happen if we crashed. hardly, if not any support of his head. not happy at all. Also, it weighs a ton!! not good if you have had a C-section and are on your own.the one thing it is good for is to have it in your house and your baby in it being rocked. even then its massive and bulky and again, still very heavy. not worth a penny to buy - completely unsuitable!!!

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An ok product but I expected more

I bought this as part of a set from the Mamas and Papas website. I paid around £400 for the package. I had already tried out the buggy in the shop and liked it. The sales assistant said the buggy can come as a travel package with carrycot, buggy and car seat (all of which fit onto the pram).

I always do plenty of research 1st before I do anything but on this occasion I feel I should have looked at the car seat in a shop somewhere 1st.

The car seat looks great on first impression. Black comfortable fabric, nicely padded with a neck support. The fastenings for the baby look safe and cannot be undone by little hands. It is also virtually impossible for a child to slip out of position.

The instructions that come with the buggy are clear and informative. A couple of practice gos with the isofix Points before the baby was born and we were hooked up to the fixings in the car. This seat can go in most modern cars with car seat fittings. They are a standard size.

When we 1st put baby in the car seat we were happy with the ride. As he was small he fitted in fine and was able to snuggle into the fabric. A few months on he wasn't appearing so comfy although I'm not sure if it was him not liking to be strapped in. The straps do adjust for larger babies but as this product says it is suitable unto 13 months I don't think they are sufficient for this age. We bought another at 11 months which he was much more comfortable in.

Another problem with this product is the weight. I know all car carriers are heavy but this seems one of the heaviest! Whether this is because it needs extra stuff to fit to the buggy I'm not sure. You will certainly have a bad back if you spend too long with it on your arm. Because of this and other factors it tended to stay in the car a lot of the time. I preferred to take the pram attachment or a baby carrier.

Overall I would choose a different car seat. The buggy and carrycot are great but this let's it down.

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served us well and will be used for another baby.

We purchased this car seat for my daughter before her birth. We chose this car seat primarily because we wanted one of the mamas and papas pushchairs/prams and this went with it to make it a travel system. This was actually purchased for us as a gift so i am not sure on the exact price but it was around £100 at the time of purchase. Its not the cheapest on the market and is actually inline with the most expensive seats around.

The seats come in a couple of colours that co-ordinate with your chosen pushchair. We went for Black as it was neutral. Due to the length of seat belts in my car (A 2007 Fiesta) and that fact that we didnt have iso fix in the car we were required to purchase a surefix base which was an additional £125. An Isofix base is also available for around the same price i believe.

The seat itself is sturdy and robust. The plastic parts on it are pretty strong and not at all flimsy. The only downside is that the seat is pretty heavy even before you have a baby in it so if your wanting to carry your baby around in it be prepared to get some serious arm muscles! That being said although its heavy so are all other car seats that are used as travel systems, i didnt feel that this one was particularly heavier than the rest. It weighs around 5.5kg.

The straps inside the seat are strong and easy to use. I found it quick and easy to put my daughter in it or get her out each time. There is a button at the bottom which you press to lengthen the straps to get your child in. You then pull the bottom part of the strap to tighten it. This was easy and i alsways felt my daughter was secure in the seat.

The material was easy to keep clean. My daughter was quite messy but i just wiped the seat up each time with a damp cloth and its still looks in great condition.

The handle to carry the seat is strong and sturdy. It has a button on either side so you can move it forward and backwards (needed for putting the seat inside the car). It also has a lever underneath the seat for lifting the seat off the pushchair or the car seat base.

Getting the seat in and out of the car was easy. I used mine with a surefix base and the seat itself just clicked onto the base really easily. You then need to put the handle down towards the rear of the car and put the seatbelt around the back of the seat. This part was quite fiddly as the section where you pass the seatbelt through is quite tight and with me having a small car it wasnt possible to stand at an angle where i could see it. Once id used the seat a few times though i got used to it.

I would definately recommend this seat for a baby. My daughter remained in her seat until she was around 9months and the seat is still in excellent condition. It will certainly be used for a second child.

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I wouldn't advise buying this car seat.

Having just submitted my first review to dooyoo on the Mamas & Papas Pliko Pramette I thought I should also submit my opinion on the car seat that came as part of the travel system. My opinions on the pram are mainly good, but unfortunately I can not really say the same for the car seat.

I'd like to say the customer service and after sale care at Mamas & Papas is shocking, but that would be a lie, as neither of these things seem to actually exist at Mamas & Papas. They are more than happy to take hundreds from you, but they don't want to hear from you afterwards (unless of course, you want to spend more money). I'm still waiting on the reply to an email I sent to them more than four years ago.

I had purchased this travel system for my first child. I will admit that I didn't put much thought into the car seat before I bought it. At this point my baby hadn't arrived yet and I just thought a car seat was a car seat. I remember thinking that this one looked nice, and that because of the RRP it had to be good, but if I'm honest I just accepted it as the car seat that matched my pram.

Even when it arrived I was still rather impressed with it, mainly because it looked well padded but also because it looked nice. After having an initial few shots of attaching and unattatching it to the base I put it away and went back to admiring my pram.

The first time I used the car seat was to bring my baby home from hospital. In the car I did feel like my daughter was being pushed towards the seat and was almost sitting vertically, but just assumed that down to inexperience we had done something wrong with levelling the base or installing the seat into the car. We didn't use the seat much in the next few weeks. In the instructions it states that the car seat can be used as a rocker. I haven't ever did this, as I don't think it's appropriate for babies to be sitting in car seats any longer than absolutely neccessary. However if you did want to use it for this you'd probably find it ok, as the baby seems more level when the car seat is on the floor. It can also be attached to the pliko pramette to form a travel system. I only did this once or twice, and the car seat sits at a much better level in the pushchair than it does in the car.

As my wee girl got a bit older, I started to detest the seat. It's a nightmare to carry as it weighs so much. I struggled to carry her from the driveway to the door and ended up just leaving the seat in the car all the time. I was never really at ease with my daughter being in the seat as if she fell asleep her head seemed to roll forward and I was terrified of what could happen in an accident, I didn't feel that she was breathing properly sleeping in such a position. We went through quite a few different cars in this period, and no matter how hard we tried to adjust the base we just couldn't prevent this from happening. I'd wanted to keep her rear facing for as long as possible, but I was relieved when she could go into a forward facing car seat.

I wouldn't recommend this seat to anyone to be honest. I think for the money that it cost there must be something better out there.

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A Classic Qiuality Car Seat

We had a bit of a nightmare when I was pregnant trying to find a baby car seat that was suitable for Newborns that we could actually work! We bought I few ones of the cheaper variation that came with terrible instructions and we just could not get them to fit securely in our car, so we ended up returning them, I wanted to make sure we had the safest car seat possible for our newborn son when he arrived, not something that didn't look or feel safe. So I decided to go for a bit of a more expensive car seat from the Mamma's & Pappa's range.

I had initially wanted something blue since I knew I was having a boy, but the prices of the coloured car seats were ridiculous and did it honestly matter what colour seat my baby sat in? The Primo Viaggio seat is neutral coloured with greys and blacks which makes it suitable for both genders and it is actually a very classic looking seat, not cheap or tacky at all - you can see that it is quality just by looking at it.

I prepared myself for the worst when it came to fitting the seat into our car since we'd already had so much trouble with trying to fit the previous seats. Sadly, like most of the others we'd bought the instructions weren't great either, I find this often to be the case with baby products such as prams, car seats and even their toys! Why the manufacturers make everything so complicated I do not know, so because once again the instructions were poor we did have to work it out for ourselves.

Thank goodness this seat was actually very easy to fit into our car, a first! So it didn't take us too long to work out. The base of the seat is fitted first by feeding the lap part of the seat belt through 2 clasps that are fixed to the base. This holds the base in place so that it doesn't slide all over the place. Then the seat itself slots into the back of the base and "clicks" when it's in place. Very simple and takes seconds, it is harder to describe than it actually is but trust me it is easy. Then the long part of the seat belt is pulled around the back of the seat and is also fed through a clasp on the back of the seat which again stops the seat from moving. We are often swapping the seat from my car into my partners so thank goodness it only takes a minute or two to fit.

My sons always seems very comfortable in this seat, in fact he usually falls asleep in it pretty quickly. If you try and jiggle the seat around you will find it has little or no movement which is reassuring if we were to ever have an acciddent. This seat also has "Side Impact Protection" which again helps if god forbid you have an accident. It is also easy to clip my son into the seat, it's not too fidly with just two straps which cross over my son and then click together to keep him in the seat. The straps are easily adjustable by pulling them at the back of the seat, we have had to do this a lot because my son has gotten so big so fast the strips quickly got tight on him! The seat also has a big handle on top and a little hood which you can pull down to stop the sun etc. shining in your babys eyes.

This seat is suitable from babies from birth to aprox. 12-15 months old (13kg) I have a feeling we will have to get a bigger one by the time my son is 12 months because he is a big baby. You can of course just click the seat out of the base and leave the base itself in the car if you do want to carry the seat somewhere or if you are putting it into a trolley to do your shopping. This seat is quite heavy for carrying though so I don't tend to do this much.

All in all this is a very supportive seat which I am very glad we bought, it is £160 new in Mammas & Pappas and this includes the base. It was worth spending the extra money for the quality of this seat. I would never want to skimp on my son's safety.

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We are fairly pleased with this car seat

This car sear is yet another piece of inherited baby equipment which we were given by my sister-in-law when she found out that Baby Frank was on the way. Sometimes, being the poor relations really pays off! General safety advice recommends not using second hand car seats because they may have have invisible faults, but because we knew the history of this car seat, we know that it has not sustained any damage.

The Primo Viaggio car seat has been around for sometime, and has undergone a few makeovers in its time, though still retains the black, simple, classic look which I really like. It is in the group 0 plus and is suitable for birth to 12-15 months (or birth to 13kg) . It is an ideal seat to have in your car as you near the end of pregnancy, just in case. It fits front and rear seats, but can only be used in front seat if there is no active air bag. It is a rear facing seat, which is the safest type of car seat available, and is for use with lap and 3 point seat belts. These days it is ISOFIX compatible, but having the older model, ours does not. It has side impact protection and a 5 point harness. The harness sleeves and washable, and you also receive a spare pair. The harness has a quick release buckle and buckle pad. In our model there are 3 shoulder positions and a 3 position head hugger, but now I understand that the new models have 5 positions for each. The seat has a curved base so you can gently rock your baby and it has a hood which can easily fold down or click up.

The car seat can be used as part of a travel system, and I understand it is compatible with Mamas & Papas Aria, Ora, O-Zon pram and Skoot, although we have never used it in this way as we have a Phil and Ted's pushchair. It has a removable machine-washable cover, and weighs 4.5kg.

Our version of the seat is easy to fit. You simply tuck a seat belt lap part into the clips on the base, and plug it in. You can then click the seat into the base and slide the top part of the seat belt around the seat through the guides. All that remains to be done then is to push the carry handle down towards the seat as far as it will go. If you want to remove the seat with the baby in it, there is a large handle at the back which needs to be lifted with one hand while the other hand lifts the seat with the handle. Occasionally this can be a bit tricky, and is definitely a two-handed job.

I have found the seat extremely easy to use. I have not tried out any other car seats so cannot compare performance, but were are generally pleased with this one. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes Baby Frank's head will loll right forward if she goes to sleep in the seat. We have tried adjusting all manner of settings but she still manages to get into what appears to be an incredibly uncomfortable sleeping position! I don't know whether the angle of the seat is not quite far back enough, or whether it is the angle which our car back seat is at.

One other thing to be aware of is to be careful of your back when you are moving your child around in the car seat. If you have just had a baby, you are prone to injuries as your muscles are still relaxed. I have seen many mothers carrying their children in their car seats. Given that the seat alone weighs 4.5kg, when you add a 3 month old at 5 or 6kg, this is a huge weight to be carrying and lifting in and out of cars at awkward angles. Where possible, I lift Baby Frank out of her seat to avoid back strain.

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Well designed and comfortable.

The Primo Viaggio car seat is a rear-facing group 0+ car seat. The main reason I chose this particular car seat was the fact that it fitted onto my Mamas & Papas stroller. I also like the fact that the seat seemed very sturdy.

INSTALLATION:This car seat is very easy to get in and out of the car when used with the Isofix base which has to be purchased seperately (at about £90). The seat simply clicks onto the base and is easily lifted off by pushing a lever at the back. Likewise it is easilt attched to the stroller. It also has easy to see indicators on the base to see it is attached correctly. I am not sure if all car seats do this, but the seat also clips onto supermarket trolleys securely (Thank you to the nice security guard in Tesco for showing me this). The seat can be used without the isofix base but i don't recommend this. I tried this in my sisters car and ended up very frustrated with the whole process.

COMFORT:As other reviewers have pointed out, the car seat is indeed rather upright for a newborn, and I was a little concerned when bringing my little girl home from the hospital. However, once she was 3 or 4 weeks old, she was fine in the car seat. The head rest is very comfortable for her, and the straps are well padded. The straps are also height adjustable as your baby grows. The carseat also rocks when placed on the floor which is a nice feature if you are carrying it about and wish to comfort the baby when chatting to friends etc.

DESIGN:The seat comes in a variety of cute designs and I get many admiring comments from others when we are out and about. The straps are well designed and easy to use. The only thing about the design i don't like is the sheer weight of the seat. However as your baby grows, it is not the weight of the seat that is the problem. The seat has a good hood to protect baby from the rain and a hoop which I use to attach a toy. You can also purchase a raincover if needed.

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Good car seat

I bought this car seat when pregnant with my 1st child as part of a travel system and have been really happy with it.The seat itself fits on to the Pliko Pramette, so if baby is asleep in car you don't have to wake them to put them in the pram, just remove the car seat from the base unit and click on to the pram chassis.The seat itself is quite light, which I was pleased with as once you add an 8lb baby even the lightest seat can suddenly become very heavy. It is really easy to put in the car. The Surefix base unit can be left in your car, strapping easily in with the seatbelt, then the babyseat clicks into the Surefix base unit, the seatbelt is threaded through the back of the seat, the carryhandle moved to the forwards position and that's it, takes about 30 seconds.Once in the car we found the seat to be extremely secure - it didn't move or wobble at all. The harness within the seat is easy to extend using a quick release button at the front. The harness height can also be adjusted as your baby grows. There is removeable padding on the harness and also an optional head hugger to keep baby's head in place - we only used this for the first few weeks as it is only really moulded for really tiny baby heads. I'm assuming it's a comfortable ride for babies, as each of mine would fall asleep almost as soon as they were put in it.The sun canopy on the seet is not the best. The attachments at the side have a tendency to come out of place, so it is very difficult to keep it in the fully extended position.We've been using ours Primo Viaggio for 4 years now with 3 different babies and been very happy with it.

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A good car seat but make sure it fits your car before you purchase.

I bought this cars seat to go with the Pliko Pramette but made the mistake of not getting it fitted whilst we were in the store, instead we asked the girl behind the checkout and she told us it would fit all cars. This was wrong!! A few weeks before my due date we decided to have a go at fitting the car seat. My car is very small and the seatbelts were far too short to go round the seat which left us with a huge problem. I was heavily pregnant and didnt fancy the long car journey all the way to the Mamas and Papas store in Nottingham, instead we got a Surefix base from our local Argos. Although this was £70 we could have done without spending, it was very convienient meaning all we had to do was clip the carseat in to place and wrap the seat belt around. The car seat is very upright and on a few occasions when we came to get our daughter out her head had fallen forward. Once she was bigger and could sit up ok it was great but not so good for newborns. I would recommend that when buying a car seat get a member of staff to show you how it is fitted and to make sure it fits your car as it is very big. I used the car seat as part of the pram so got alot of use out of it, but if just using as a car seat it is expensive compared to other car seat.

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A solid car seat that is comfortable for baby but difficult to use once baby gets heavier.

We bought our Primo Viaggio car seat with base for our first child last year. It is extremely easy to fit the base into the car and as this stays in place all you have to do is clip the car seat in and loop the seatbelt round it. This was very easy to do at the beginning but we found that as our daughter got heavier it became more difficult to unclip from the base and the more unmanageable it became to lift the car seat once baby was in place. In fact in got to the stage that we were having to use force to lift the car seat out.

In terms of using with our M&P pram we didn't do this as often as we thought we would, although when we did it was very simple to slot it into position.

The seat itself was very well padded and came with an extra insert and shoulder pads to use with newborns. The shade often rides up but is fairly useful in protecting from sunlight.

I would recommend this car seat if you were going to use it a lot with your pram. It is expensive for the relatively short amount of time you will use it though. My daughter reached the max weight at 8 months old. For my next child however, I will be using a fixed stage 0-1 car seat which remains in the car to save my back the ache of carrying such a weight!

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spend your money else where

i bought the mamas and papas viaggio car seat when i was pregnant with my first baby, now 4 years ago. as i had bought the mamas and papas freestyler and this car seat will fit into it - on the understandong that it was easy and convienient and also more comfortable for the baby to be in the buggy this way as it is quite a big pushchair.The carseat is from newborn up till 13kg (a year old). Looked great and i couldnt wait to use it!The first thing i started to notice was that it sits the baby very upright... although it came with a head hugger babys head still slouched a little. It would go into the base in the car, sometimes you have to wiggle it bit to get it to click into place, and then the seat belt goes around the back of the seat which is supose to secure it and the handle moves down, but i always found that no matter how tight it was it still moved. The thing i hated most was that it would then get stuck in the base... so i would spend sometimes 15-20minute squeezing the handle at the back and pulling and it really annoyed me! then by the time it finally came free, the baby had woken up and i may of well have just lifted her out!also, it wasent long before the bits that held the hood on snapped.few good points.... it looks great in the buggy, secure and nice to see your baby as it fits in with her facing you. also, i used to use it alot to sit baby in and it does rock well....worked everytime to get baby to sleep.however definatly did not last till 13kg... i had to move her into a bigger seat at 9mths as her feet were touching the seat in front of her, she was not a very long baby.needless to say i did not use for my next two babies.

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If your car seat isnt included with your pram, look around

When we bought our M&P pram, this car seat came as part of the package.

We have used it since my daughter was born with no problems (we also purchased the surefix base). She has always been happy in it, and we've been happy with it.

She is now 8 months and is getting really annoyed when we are in the car, I suspect this is down to her wanting to face forward now (she's quite nosey like her mother) so we have bought her the Britax first class seat but are going to have to keep her in this one for another month. She is also too long for it now and her feet touch the seat infront of her.

The seat is heavy on its own, and whilst she was a newborn we were okay to carry it (although not for long) but now she is approx 15lb and I cant even lift it its so heavy.

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Having bought this as a composite with the Freestyler pram, I wasn't sure what to expect. The base was easy to fit into the car and the seat slots in readily. However, the angle of the seat makes it extremely uncomfortable for a newborn or younger baby, not as severe as a 90 degree angle but not far off! My mother-in-law bought a Britax rear and forward facing combi (i.e. stage 0 and 1), it's great in comparison.

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not suitable for newborn

I brought the primo viaggio for my newborn in order to use straight from the hospital. I was very dissapointed with this product,the upright seat forces your baby's head to jutt forwards and the side padding is useless. I would say that this seat is totally unsuitable for a newborn or young baby with little head control and whilst driving you are worrying as to the position your baby's head has fallen in to. i would say do not buy this seat

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Product Details

This versatile rear facing Car Seat is compatible with the Mamas & Papas G-Matic chassis and pushchairs to create a total Travel System. Always follow the fitting instructions supplied. The Primo Viaggio SIP can be used in the car as a car seat with or without the optional surefix base, which can be purchased separately.